UNIVERSITY OF CALOOCAN CITY

Biglang Awa St., Corner Catleya St., EDSA, Caloocan City

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

BUILDING AND ENHANCING NEW LITERACIES

ACROSS CURRICULUM
Course Module

SUBJECT CODE: MS 116

TOPIC OR LESSON: 9: Art and Creativity Literacy
WEEK: 15-16
SUB-TOPIC/S: Characterizing Artistically Literate Individuals
Issues in Teaching Creativity

OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts
of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed
exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have
liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and
philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce
and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music,
architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

Despite the negative notions the society has to art and art as a means of life, John Adams,
as early as between 1774 to 1801, emphasized the importance of art to the well-being of
his children. Art instruction helps children with the development of motor skills, language
skills, social skills, decision-making, risk-taking, and inventiveness. Visual arts teach learners
about color, layout, perspective, and balance: all techniques that are necessary in
presentations (visual, digital) of academic work. And all these are almost as important, if
not equally important as the core subjects that we teach in the 21st century.

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 LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the week, the students are expected to:

1. Design creative and innovative classroom activities for specific topic and grade
level of students.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

1. define art and creativity literacy
2. enumerate the issues in teaching creativity
3. apply and integrate art and creativity literacy in varied educational situations

ENGAGE

Guess the Artist: Identify the artist behind the given paintings and pieces of art and give
your insights about them.

EXPLORE

Classroom Discussion:
• What is your personal definition of creativity?
• How do you channel yourself through art?

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 EXPLAIN

ARTISTIC AND CREATIVITY LITERACY

Artistic literacy is defined in the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards: A Conceptual
Framework for Arts Learning (2014) as the knowledge and understanding required to participate
authentically in the arts. While individuals can learn about dance, media, music, theater, and
visual arts through reading print texts, artistic literacy requires that they engage in artistic creation
processes directly through the use of materials (e.g., charcoal or paint or clay, musical instruments
or scores) and in specific spaces (e.g., concert halls, stages, dance rehearsal spaces, art studios,
and computer labs).

Researches have recognized that there are significant benefits of arts learning and engagement
in schooling (Eisner, 2002: MENC, 1996; Perso, Nutton, Fraser, Silburn, & Tait. 2011). The arts have
been shown to create environments and conditions that result in improved academic, social, and
behavioral outcomes for students, from early childhood through the early and later years of
schooling. However, due to the range of art forms and the diversity and complexity of programs
and research that have been implemented, it is difficult to generalize findings concerning the
strength of the relationships between the arts and learning and the causal mechanisms
underpinning these associations.

The flexibility of the forms comprising the arts positions students to embody a range of literate
practices to:

• use their minds in verbal and nonverbal ways;

• communicate complex ideas in a variety of forms;
• understand words, sounds, or images;
• imagine new possibilities; and
• persevere to reach goals and make them happen.

Engaging in quality arts education experiences provides students with an outlet for powerful
creative expression, communication, aesthetically rich understanding, and connection to the
world around them. Being able to critically read, write, and speak about art should not be the sole
constituting factor for what counts as literacy in the Arts (Shenfield, 2015). Considerably, more
dialogue, discussion, and research are necessary to form a deeper picture of the Arts and
creativity more broadly. The cultivation of imagination and creativity and the formation of deeper
theory surrounding multimodality and multi-literacies in the Arts are paramount.

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Elliot Eisner posited valuable lessons or benefits that education can learn from arts and he
summarized these into eight as follows:

1. Form and content cannot be separated.

How something is said or done shapes the content of experience. In education, how
something Is taught, how curricula are organized, and how schools are designed to
impact upon what students will learn. These "side effects" may be the real main effects of
the practice.

2. Everything interacts; there is no content without form and no form without content.
When the content of a form is changed, so too, the form is altered. Form and content
are like two sides of a coin.

3. Nuance matters.
To the extent to which teaching is an art, attention to nuance is critical. It can also be
said that the aesthetic lives in the details that the maker can shape in the course of
creation. How a word is spoken, how a gesture is made, how a line is written, and how a
melody is played, all affect the character of the whole. All depend upon the modulation
of the nuances that constitute the act.

4. Surprise is not to be seen as an intruder in the process of inquiry, but as a part of the
rewards, one reaps when working artistically.
No surprise, no discovery, no discovery, no progress. Educators should not resist surprise
but create the conditions to make it happen. It is one of the most powerful sources of
intrinsic satisfaction.

5. Slowing down perception is the most promising way to see what is actually there.
It is true that we have certain words to designate high levels of intelligence. We describe
somebody as being swift, or bright, or sharp, or fast on the pickup. Speed in its swift state
is a descriptor for those we call smart. Yet one of the qualities we ought to be promoting
in our schools is a slowing down of perception: the ability to take one's time to smell the
flowers, to really perceive in the Deweyan sense, and not merely to recognize what one
looks at.

6. The limits of language are not the limits of cognition.

We know more than we can tell. In common terms. literacy refers essentially to the ability
to read and to write. But literacy can be re-conceptualized as the creation and Use of
a form of representation that will enable one to create meaning – meaning that will not
take the impress of language in its conventional form. In addition, literacy is associated
with high-level forms of cognition. We tend to think that in order to know, one has to be
able to say. However, as Polanyi (1969) reminds us, we know more than we can tell.

7. Somatic experience is one of the most important indicators that someone has gotten it
right.
Related to the multiple ways in which we represent the world through our multiple forms
of literacy is the way in which we come to know the world through the entailments of our
body. Sometimes one knows a process or an event through one's skin.

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 8. Open-ended tasks permit the exercise of imagination and an exercise of the imagination
is one of the most important of human aptitudes.
It is imagination, not necessity, that is the mother of invention. Imagination is the source
of new possibilities, In the arts, imagination is a primary virtue. So, it should be in the
teaching of mathematics, in all of the sciences, in history, and, indeed, in virtually all that
humans create. This achievement would require for its realization a culture of schooling
in which the Imaginative aspects of the human condition were made possible.

Characterizing Artistically Literate Individuals

How would you characterize an artistically literate student? Literature on art education and art
standards in education cited the following as common traits of artistically literate individuals:

• use a variety of artistic media, symbols, and metaphors to communicate their own ideas
and respond to the artistic communications of others;
• develop creative personal realization in at least one art form in which they continue active
involvement as an adult;
• cultivate culture, history, and other connections through diverse forms and genres of
artwork;
• find joy, inspiration, peace, intellectual stimulation, and meaning when they participate in
the arts; and
• seek artistic experiences and support the arts in their communities.

Issues in Teaching Creativity

In his famous TED talks on creativity and innovation, Sir Ken Robinson (Do schools kill creativity?
2006: How to escape education's death valley?, 2013) stressed paradigms in the education system
that hamper the development of creative capacity among learners. He emphasized that schools
stigmatize mistakes. This primarily prevents students from trying and coming up with original ideas.
He also reiterated the hierarchy of systems. Firstly, most useful subjects such as Mathematics and
languages for work are at the top while arts are at the bottom. Secondly, the academic ability
has come to dominate our view of intelligence. Curriculum competencies, classroom experiences,
and assessments are geared toward the development of academic ability.

Students are schooled in order to pass entrance exams in colleges and universities later on.
Because of this painful truth, Robinson challenged educators to:

• educate the well-being of learners and shift from the conventional leanings toward
academic ability alone;
• give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, and to physical education;
• facilitate learning and work toward stimulating curiosity among learners; awaken and
develop powers of creativity among learners: and
• view intelligence as diverse, dynamic, and distinct, contrary to the common belief that it
should be academic ability geared.

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In "First Literacies: Art. Creativity, Play, Constructive Meaning-Making." MCArdle and Wright
asserted that educators should make deliberate connections with children's first literacies of art
and play. A recommended new approach to early childhood pedagogy would emphasize
children's embodied experience through drawing. This would include a focus on children's
creation, manipulation, and changing of meaning through engaged interaction with art materials
(Dourish, 2001). through physical, emotional, and social immersion (Anderson, 2003). The authors
proposed four essential components to developing or designing a curriculum that cultivates
student artistic and creative literacy. Such approaches actively encourage the creative,
constructive thinking involved in meaning-making which are fundamental to the development of
the systems of reading, writing, and numbering.

1. Imagination and pretense, fantasy and metaphor

A creative curriculum will not simply allow, but will actively support. play and playfulness.
The teacher will plan for learning and teaching opportunities for children to be at once,
who they are and who they are not, transforming reality, building narratives, and mastering
and manipulating signs and symbol systems.

2. Active menu to meaning-making

In a classroom where children can choose to draw, write, paint, or play in the way that
suits their purpose and/or mood, literacy learning, and arts learning will inform and support
each other.

3. Intentional, holistic teaching

A creative curriculum requires a creative teacher, who understands the creative processes,
and purposefully supports learners in their experiences. Intentional teaching does not
mean drill and rote leaming and, indeed, endless rote learning exercises might indicate
the very opposite of intentional teaching. What makes for intentional teaching is
thoughtfulness and purpose, and this could occur in such activities as reading a story.
adding a prop, drawing children's attention to a spider's web, and playing with rhythm
and rhyme. Even the thoughtful and intentional imposing of constraints can lead to
creativity.

4. Co-player, co-artist
Educators must be reminded of the importance of understanding children as current
citizens, with capacities and capabilities in the here and now. It is vital for teachers to know
and appreciate children and what they know by being mindful of the present and making
time for conversation interacting with the children as they draw. Teachers must try to avoid
letting the busy management work of their days take precedence and distract them from
the being."

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 ELABORATE

Video Viewing: https://bit.ly/3f9a07U

To further understand Arts and Creativity Literacy. Watch this video and take notes of
your insights.

EVALUATE

Lesson Plan Writing:

Craft a lesson plan that integrates creative activities.

REFERENCES

Alata, E. (2019) Building and Enhancing New Literacies Across Curriculum. Rex
Bookstore. Manila, Philippines.

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

• “The Literacy of the Creative Arts” Accessed from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=Vjct2rPCudI&feature=emb_lo
go

Prepared by:

MARGARET A. BAELLO

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